The Unwanted
by Lyrical Ballads
Summary: He really was an ugly child, all scrawny limbs and big eyes, and he would probably grow up to be an ugly man. [Beni's backstory in three parts]
1. Ilona

**Disclaimer:** _The Mummy _doesn't belong to me.

**Author's Note:** This story has been on my mind for a long time and I feel like it's pretty overdue, so I finally sat down and wrote it. This is my general backstory on Beni, which consists of three different stages in his early life, seen through the eyes of three different people. Every time Beni mentions his past in one of my other stories, this is what he's referring to.

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_The Unwanted_

* * *

**I.**

**Ilona**

The winter morning was dark and cloudy out on the streets of Budapest, but Agoston's home was warm. Agoston's home was always kept warm while the girls next door froze during the day and worked hard at night, trying to keep their beds from being cold and empty. Agoston himself looked the same as he did the last time Ilona saw him. He was seated comfortably at his desk with a pipe in his hand, blowing casual smoke rings while a fire crackled in the nearby hearth. He tried to look the part of an elegant man with his dark, neatly trimmed beard and his fancy waistcoats, but his blue eyes were as cold as the winter sky when he set down his pipe and looked Ilona in the face.

"It's been a while, hasn't it?" he said. He was not a handsome man and looked even less handsome when he smiled. "Are you in need of work, my dear?"

"No," said Ilona. "I would rather live in the street than work for you again."

"Those are harsh words after everything I've done for you."

"Don't flatter yourself. You've done nothing for me."

The last time Ilona Gabor stood in Agoston Szabo's home, she was still one of the girls who worked in the house next door, desperately trying to warm her bed with whatever stranger she could snag. She remembered how frightened she was the last time she stood in front of his desk, letting the tears roll down her cheeks as she begged him to let her stay, but her tears had no effect on Agoston. Ilona was going to have a baby, and Agoston Szabo didn't like his girls to have babies.

_Children are bad for business, Ilona_, he told her that day, the same exact pipe clutched in his hand. _I'll keep you for another month, but then you have to leave._

So she left his brothel and had the baby, but she couldn't forget the man who had turned her into the streets. She couldn't forget the man who lounged in front of a roaring fire and smoked the finest tobacco, doing whatever he pleased without paying the consequences. He took a drag on his pipe, his eyes colder than ever, and allowed his gaze to settle on the baby carriage she brought with her.

"You kept the brat, I see."

"Yes, Agoston," said Ilona. "I kept the brat."

"I would have helped you take care of it, you know. I offered to pay for it out of my own pocket."

"I know," she said. "And I probably would have bled to death like Jola did."

"Jola was very young and very weak," he said dismissively. "She would have never survived if she'd had the baby." He took another drag on his pipe, gently blowing smoke towards the ceiling. "Anyway, I would have paid a little extra to keep you alive, my dear," he added. "I always liked you, you know."

She knew perfectly well how much he liked her. It still made her skin crawl when she remembered him coming to her room in the middle of the day, tobacco smoke clinging to his garish maroon waistcoat, and telling her he wanted her. She was beautiful and he wanted her, and he could throw her onto the street if he didn't have her, so she let him into her bed and he threw her onto the street anyway.

"I'm not here to discuss how much you like me," said Ilona. She realized her hands had clenched into fists and quickly relaxed them.

"Then why have you come back after all this time?" said Agoston. "To stand there and insult me? You're not setting a good example for your baby, you know."

He was smirking. How she _hated_ that smirk.

"Why don't you introduce me to the little thing?" he asked, looking at the baby carriage again. "I'd like to have a look at it."

"It's a he," she said. "His name is Beni."

"Beni," Agoston repeated, his lips still twisted in a smirk. "A good name for a whore's baby."

She reached inside the carriage and pulled back the blanket that covered her sleeping son. He was awake now, whimpering softly the moment she touched the blanket, and Ilona lifted him out of the carriage and held him against her in an attempt to calm him. Beni didn't have Ilona's light hair or her brown eyes. Instead his hair was dark and his eyes were a cold blue, though he was scrawny just like Ilona's brothers had been when they were babies, and he had the saddest face she had ever seen on a child. He had been born sad and small, undernourished from all the long months Ilona had gone hungry, and he was still sad and small as he whimpered and looked up at her with his big, tragic eyes.

Ilona turned the baby around so Agoston could see his face. "There," she said. "Take a good look at him."

Agoston leaned forward a little to see the baby, then leaned back in his seat with a disinterested air. "Ugly little thing, isn't he?"

"He's yours," said Ilona.

He dropped his pipe on the desk and hurriedly cleaned up the spilled tobacco. "What?"

"He's yours," Ilona repeated.

"You can't possibly know that. You've been with a lot of men, Ilona."

"He looks just like you. Can't you see it?"

"Is this why you've come?" said Agoston. He sounded annoyed, all of his smug satisfaction gone. "You're desperately seeking a father for your bastard child?"

"I don't want you to be his father." Ilona set Beni back in his carriage and tucked him in with the blanket, glad that his whimpers hadn't turned into actual cries. "But you are."

The months before Beni was born were agony. She would lie awake at night and wonder who the baby's father was, and by the time Beni arrived she decided she would rather not know. She tried not to look for anyone's features in his face, but her suspicions grew stronger as Beni grew older, and now that he was six months old she couldn't ignore it anymore. Her son looked exactly like Agoston Szabo, the man who used her at his convenience and tossed her aside when she was no longer useful.

Agoston was staring at the baby carriage as if he had never seen one before. "I can't be the father," he said. "You would have put your brat in an orphanage if I was the father."

"How do you know what I would or wouldn't do, Agoston?"

"How do you know the baby is mine?" he shot back. "Do you think I'm the only man in Budapest with this hair and these eyes?"

"Stop it," she said softly, trying to hold back the tears that sprang to her eyes. "Stop denying it. You saw his face."

"Well what do you want me to do? Marry you and make it honest? I run a brothel, Ilona. I'm not a family man."

"I don't want you to marry me. I just wanted you to see Beni and know what you've done."

"I've done nothing. You're the one who refused my help and chose to have the baby."

"There wouldn't _be_ a baby if you'd kept your hands off me." She couldn't stop the tears anymore and furiously blinked them away. It was a miracle Beni hadn't started wailing.

Agoston looked at her for a long moment, a softer expression on his face. "Oh, Ilona, my dear girl," he said gently. "Don't pretend you didn't want it. You're not the victim you think you are."

"I _didn't_ want it," she snapped. "And I hated every second of it. But I put up with your advances and I had your baby and I'm tired of scraping by while you sit here with your nice tobacco and your nice warm fire."

"What do you mean?"

"I want money. _That's_ why I've come, Agoston."

He started to laugh, though there was no humor in the sound of it. "Money?" he repeated. "Why do you think I should give you money?"

"I'm raising your son by myself. I can barely afford to look after him."

"Then put him in an orphanage."

"No," said Ilona. "I'm not going to let you forget he exists. He's your son and the least you can do is lend me a hand."

Agoston busied himself with refilling his pipe, ignoring her for a few moments, and didn't speak again until he had taken a drag and blown out the smoke. "I don't know why you keep insisting the boy is my son. Just wait a year or two. He'll probably grow up to look like somebody else, and then you'll pester _him_ for money."

"You're despicable."

He grinned at her. "I'm sorry you feel that way, my dear."

Beni had finally started to cry, letting out a series of thin little wails that made Agoston frown darkly at the baby carriage, his shoulders tense. Ilona lifted the baby out of the carriage and tried to calm him again, shooting a glare at Agoston.

"I'm leaving now," she said. "But I'll come back. I'll keep coming back until you admit that he's yours."

Agoston seemed to have run out of arguments. He didn't reply and continued to sit with his shoulders tense and a frown on his face, puffing on his pipe while Ilona took her baby and left the warm room, stepping back out into the cold winter morning.


	2. Gusztav

**II.**

**Gusztav**

Ilona Gabor had failed to pay her rent again. She begged and pleaded, of course, asking Gusztav to give her another week, but she had played her games long enough. She and the boy would have to leave if she couldn't produce the money. She looked flustered when she answered his brisk knock at the door, her young face pale after hours spent in a poorly lit factory, and she muttered her apologies as she let him into the cramped little apartment.

"I don't need to hear your excuses, Ilona," said Gusztav, cutting her off mid-sentence. He felt uncomfortable in the dark little room, knowing the paper-thin walls did nothing to keep out the neighbors' crying children and drunken arguments. They did little to keep out the cold that made him shiver in his thin coat. "Month after month I ask for the rent, and it is always late. I can't keep a tenant who doesn't pay for her room on time."

"I'll have the money soon," said Ilona. Her brown eyes looked too wide in her thin face, her long skirts worn out from being mended over and over again. "I promise, Gusztav. I'll have it next week."

"That's what you said _last_ week," he reminded her.

"Beni was sick last week. I had to pay the doctor."

_Beni_. The boy sat huddled in front of a tiny fire, shivering as he poked bits of old newspaper into the meager flames, and looked up when he heard his name. Gusztav detested the child. He was an unsightly little scrap who should have been drowned at birth, always scurrying around where he didn't belong and whining in that pathetic little voice of his. He looked younger than his six years, scrawny and underfed with a pair of sad, helpless eyes that might have looked innocent on another child, but did nothing to improve Beni's homely face.

He was probably a bastard. He _looked_ like a bastard.

Gusztav knew the sort of gossip that surrounded a woman who had a child and no wedding ring. When Ilona moved into Gusztav's building several months ago, she told him she was married and had to sell her ring so her husband could go to America and earn his fortune, but he could tell she was lying. There was no husband and no wedding ring. There was only Ilona with her pale, tired face and her unsightly little boy, and Gusztav had the power to turn them both into the street.

"You're running out of excuses," he warned her.

"Please," Ilona begged. "I was thrown out of my last apartment when I couldn't pay the rent. I'll do _anything_ if you'll only let me stay."

Anything, she said. Ilona was too thin and almost ghostly pale, but she was still a pretty woman; the only pretty young woman in the entire building. She looked nothing like her little rat of a son.

"Perhaps we can make some sort of arrangement," Gusztav said slowly.

"Please," she said again. "I'm so tired of being tossed into the streets."

She was still quite pretty and she would do anything, and Gusztav knew what sort of woman she truly was. He had heard the gossip about Ilona Gabor and her fatherless boy.

"I'm a very lonely man," he said, taking a couple of steps closer to her. "My wife has been gone for eight years now."

"I'm very sorry to hear that."

"Maybe you can find it in your heart to give me the comfort I need on a cold winter evening like this."

Her eyes were wider than ever as she stared at him, a blush reddening her pale cheeks. "Yes," she said softly, following his gaze to her bed. "You look like you could use some comfort. But not while my son is in the room."

He had forgotten about the boy. Beni was still huddled in front of the fire, looking like a tiny beggar in his patched and frayed coat, and Gusztav didn't like how he sat there with his ears pricked up, listening to every word.

"Forget the boy," said Gusztav, impatient to have her once he realized he wanted her. "And let's forget about the rent for a while. Come on, now..." He took her by the hand and tried to steer her to the thin mattress she shared with her brat, but she shook her head.

"Beni, go play outside," she said.

Beni turned to stare at her with sorrowful eyes. "But it's cold," he complained.

"_Go_," said Ilona, refusing to look at him.

Beni left the room, kicking things and muttering childish nonsense as he went, and Ilona led Gusztav to her bed. She wasn't shy as she let him take what he wanted, though she had no passion and made hardly any noise, which suited him perfectly when the walls were so thin. It wouldn't do for the neighbors to overhear. He was nearly finished when he thought he felt somebody watching him, and when he turned his head he found Beni standing by the door, his eyes round and confused. The boy must have snuck back into the room.

"What are you looking at?" Gusztav demanded. He pulled off one of his shoes and threw it at Beni, though he missed him by a couple of inches. Beni squeaked like an injured mouse and disappeared.

Ilona said nothing. Gusztav finished up and rolled off her, then turned his back on her so he could button his trousers and fetch his shoe. She continued to lay on her back in silence, though he could hear her gasping a little as she struggled to catch her breath. He was pulling on his coat when Ilona finally spoke.

"Would you fetch Beni for me?" she asked. Her eyes were listless and her face was ghostly pale once more, her hair spread across the pillow. "Tell him he can stay inside now."

"He's _your_ son," said Gusztav. "Why don't you go tell him?"

"I... I can't," she said, trying to straighten her tangled skirts. "It's better if you go out there."

"All right." He looked at her for a moment, watching her as she sat up and ran her fingers through her disheveled hair. "I'm going to be lonely all week," he added.

Her eyes looked nothing like her son's, though they carried the same sad desperation as she gazed back at him. She said nothing, but simply looked at him with those wide eyes and then turned her head away, as if she hadn't heard him at all. But he knew she heard him and he knew what she would do when he came to visit her again. He knew exactly what sort of woman she was.

He wasn't surprised when he found Beni lurking in the hallway, his skinny hands shoved into his pockets as he leaned against the wall. He jumped when he saw Gusztav and immediately put his arms around himself, as if expecting Gusztav to throw another shoe at him. He really was an ugly child, all scrawny limbs and big eyes, and he would probably grow up to be an ugly man.

"Your mother told you to play outside," said Gusztav.

Beni frowned at the floor. "But it's _cold_."

"She's your mother. You do what she tells you."

"I don't have to listen to her. She doesn't like me."

"How do you know that?"

Beni didn't respond and shoved his hands back into his pockets, his small face still pulled into a frown. Gusztav started to walk away when Beni's voice piped up, stopping him in his tracks.

"What were you doing to her?" Beni asked.

Gusztav didn't know how to respond. He had never liked children. "I was giving her what all women want," he said.

"I don't think she liked it much."

"You're a child," Gusztav snapped. "You'll understand when you're a man."

He continued walking down the hall, headed back to his own room, and heard a door slam in the distance. Beni had disappeared into his cramped little home, back to his mother who supposedly didn't like him, and Gusztav kept on walking.

Next time he came to see Ilona, he would make sure her son was outdoors, even if he had to drag him there himself.


	3. Vilma

**III.**

**Vilma**

He looked like Agoston.

That was the first thing she noticed when she saw him up close for the first time. Vilma had seen him several times before in the last five years, but it was always from a distance and she couldn't make out the details beyond his dark, messy hair and his thin frame. She used to watch him come up the street with a woman who must be his mother, though they looked nothing alike, and the two of them always walked past the brothel and into the house next door where Agoston lived. Vilma could never figure out what the woman and her son wanted with Agoston, but it suddenly became apparent when Agoston himself opened her door and shoved the boy into her bedroom.

Vilma stared at the boy and the boy stared back, looking wide-eyed and uncertain in a patched set of clothes that were too big for him.

"He needs a place to stay for the night," said Agoston, giving the boy a little nudge. He placed some money in Vilma's hand and winked. "Keep him entertained."

Vilma opened her mouth to ask a question, but Agoston seemed to think his explanation was adequate and left the room, shutting the door behind him. She was left alone with the boy, who glanced around nervously with his arms crossed in front of his chest, and she was startled at how much he resembled Agoston. He was smaller and thinner than Agoston, with a fearful look in his eyes, but the resemblance was uncanny and Vilma found it hard to take her eyes off him as she put her money in a drawer and searched for something to say.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"It's Beni." His voice came out as an awkward whine.

"How old are you?"

He shrugged his skinny shoulders. "I don't know. Fifteen, I guess."

Fifteen. Boys his age didn't belong in a brothel and Vilma almost told him so, but she remembered the money that sat in her drawer. "Why did Agoston bring you here?" she asked instead.

Another shrug. "I have no place to go."

"He's your father, isn't he?"

Beni had been staring at the floor, but his head jerked up rapidly and he scowled at Vilma. "I don't have a father."

"What about your mother? Do you have one of those?"

"My mother is dead."

"I'm sorry."

"She never liked me," said Beni, his sad eyes growing sadder. "She hated to look at me, and then she started coughing all the time and I didn't like to look at _her_ either." He was looking at the floor again, poking at a loose floorboard with the tip of his shoe. "She died last month."

"You've been living on your own?"

He nodded. "But I can't live in my apartment anymore. I have no money and I can't screw the landlord like my mother did, so now I'm on the street."

Vilma didn't know what to say. Beni had a pathetic way of speaking, using his sad voice and his sad eyes to paint the bleakest picture, and she felt sorry for this skinny, nervous boy who looked so much like Agoston. He _had_ to be Agoston's son. Beni should be staying next door with his father, not standing uncomfortably in a prostitute's bedroom, and Vilma managed to find her voice again.

"But why are you here?" she asked Beni.

"I _told_ you," he whined. "I have no place to go."

"This isn't a hotel. You _do_ know what kind of house this is, don't you?"

He scowled at her again. "I'm not a little boy."

"Agoston shouldn't have brought you here."

"The generous Mr. Szabo said I should stay here for the night. He said it's the only place where I'll be wanted."

Vilma had no illusions about the man who gave her a place to live and took most of her earnings. She knew Agoston's soul was as ugly as his face, but she didn't think he was cruel enough to send his homeless, motherless son to a brothel for the night, rather than giving him shelter under his own roof. Surely even Agoston wasn't cruel enough for that.

"He _is_ your father, isn't he?" she asked again, her voice much gentler than before.

"Who?" said Beni.

"Agoston. You... you look just like him."

Beni turned away from her and grumbled something in a language she couldn't understand.

"What was that?" asked Vilma.

"That was German."

"You speak German?"

"A little. A German family lived in my building and I used to listen to them."

"You know any other languages?"

"Maybe," said Beni. "But why are you still talking? You're supposed to entertain me."

"I know," said Vilma. "That's why I'm talking."

"No." Beni finally looked at her—really, truly looked at her without fear in his eyes—and let his gaze settle upon the low-cut neck of her gown, which did little to hide her generous breasts. "You were paid to _entertain_ me. Why don't you do what you were paid for?"

In different circumstances she might have been embarrassed, but Vilma had forgotten how to feel embarrassed a long time ago. She was only slightly puzzled and glanced towards her bed, where she had planned to sleep while her guest took the floor. "You mean...?"

"Yes," said Beni. He was smirking now, looking more like Agoston than ever. "That _is_ what you get paid to do, isn't it?"

He was so young, but she supposed she wasn't really so old. She was only several years older than this scrawny boy and he may have looked like Agoston, but he was so pathetic. There was nothing pathetic about Agoston Szabo. Agoston wore fancy waistcoats and kept his beard trimmed to perfection, walking through the world like he owned it, and now he wanted his son to lie with a prostitute instead of giving him a proper place to stay.

Beni was so young and so pathetic, and Vilma couldn't refuse him. She had no pride to swallow and took him to her bed.

"You ever done this before?" she asked.

"Of course I have," he said sullenly.

But she could tell he hadn't. He wasn't the first awkward boy she had been with, after all, and he was clumsy and nervous and a little too eager all at once. When it was over he scooted to the far side of the bed, where he pretended to stare at the ceiling, but she caught him stealing glances at her.

"Are you Catholic?" he asked.

"Why do you ask?" said Vilma.

"You wear a cross around your neck. I saw it."

"Yes, I'm Catholic," she replied. "Are you?"

"I guess I am," said Beni, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. "I pray a lot."

"What do you pray about?"

"Anything. I've been told that God loves me." His mouth twisted in a sarcastic little sneer. "I'd like to know if it's true."

Vilma didn't know what to say, so she said nothing at all and noticed Beni glancing at her again, like a nervous animal hoping for a handout. He asked her if she had any cigarettes and she gave him one, wondering where someone so young had learned how to smoke, and she lit a cigarette for herself as well. The two of them smoked in silence and Vilma thought he would drift off to sleep soon, but he put out his cigarette and eyed her up once more, looking at her in the way that dozens of men had looked at her. He wanted her again and she let him have her, though he was pitiful and awkward and finished much too soon, and when he rolled off her a second time he retreated back to the far side of the bed.

He faced the wall this time. She couldn't hear him breathe, he was so quiet, and the silence weighed on her until she felt she had to break it.

"Where are you going to go after this?"

Beni took a long time to respond, as if he were unsure whether or not she had spoken to him. "I don't know," he said. "I'll have to find work."

"Did Agoston tell you that?"

"Yes, but I don't want to work. There are other ways to survive."

That was the last thing he said before he and Vilma both fell asleep, and when she woke up in the morning her cross was gone and Beni had disappeared.


End file.
